Here you will find an archive of materials related to our podcasts: transcripts, articles, interviews, songs and more.

A’ Chogaidh sung by Annie MacLean (Program 15)

Annie was born Jan. 5, 1889, in Castle Bay, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and attended school there. According to MacKenzieâ€™s Historical Sketch of Christmas Island Parish, her father, Michael McInnis (b. June 28, 1850) was a Justice of the Peace and Fishery Inspector for a number of years. Her grandfather, Neil MacInnis, was a schoolteacher and the first postmaster of Castle Bay. He emigrated to Cape Breton from Barra in the Outer Hebrides with his parents in 1817 at the age of five. Undoubtedly Annieâ€™s parents and grandparents saw to it that she was educated in Gaelic, as her enthusiasm for reading and learning Gaelic songs from books and newspapers indicated. She especially enjoyed singing songs that no one else knew. She passed away in 1980.

The transcription of this song came from an old newspaper clipping of unknown source. The song itself probably dates to the start of the Second Boer War (1899-1902). The battle of Majuba Hill, Feb. 27, 1881, was a resounding defeat for the British forces fighting the Boers in Natal, including the 92nd Highlanders. Among them was Hector Macdonald, of â€œHector the Heroâ€ fame. He was one of a few Highlanders who remained on top of Majuba when the other British troops fled. He hurled rocks and fought with his fists when ammunition ran out, and had to be subdued by four men.

Gillebride MacMillan was raised on South Uist but now lives in Vigo, Spain, with his wife Maite. Although he’s a long way from Scotland, he’s very much involved in Gaelic-medium education, teaching geography in Gaelic to students at five schools in Scotland through the Internet. The world is getting smaller in some ways, Gillebride admits. “There are few obstacles to anyone who wants to learn or hear Gaelic. You can listen to Radio nan Gaidheal anytime, anywhere in the world,” he points out.

At the same time, the communities where Gaelic is spoken are changing. “You can’t go into a store in the Hebrides and expect to speak Gaelic with people there,” he said. “People don’t speak to their neighbors like they used to, they speak to friends and to the people they know.” That means Gaelic-speaking communities are growing more fragmented. “It’s a different type of community that speaks Gaelic now.”

Faodaidh sibh agallamh le Gillebride chluinntinn ann an Gaelcast 6.

You may listen to an interview with Gillebride in Gaelcast 6.

How Archie Alex Cursed His Own Forerunner

This is a transcript of the story about forerunners or manaidhean told by Archie Alex MacKenzie of Christmas Island, Cape Breton, in Gaelcast #5. Liam Ã“ Caiside recorded the story from Archie in September 1991 during a visit by MacKenzie to the United States.

“By now you realize that I’m some kind of a character. But you know what, I’ll bet that there’s not one of you people that believe in forerunners. I’m going to tell you, my mother, honest to goodness, that woman heard more forerunners â€¦ I’ll get around to this particular one later. But I was the only one in the family that took after her. My father, I never heard him mention hearing or seeing anything or any of the family — and it was a large family — except me. I could write a book, believe it or not. Not only forerunners, but other things. I’m not going to get into that. But most of the people who write about those things they relate what’s happened to somebody else. Not themselves. The reason I thought of that one, was this morning, my mother said, ‘Well well,’ she said, ‘Now it was myself that heard the good step dancer last night.’ ‘What are you talking? We never heard a good step dancer.’ ‘Yes, it was about two o’clock in the morning, and here was somebody step dancing on the living room floor.’ Oh, we all laughed. That was that. It wasn’t long after that, old [Father] Charlie [MacKenzie] came to the mission at Christmas Island. And one evening after the service and after he’d blasted everyone, he was invited to our place to meet all of the neighbors â€¦ the house was dolled up and who was the center of the entertainment but Father Charlie. And, you know that he would sing some of the old traditional songs in Gaelic and he could hear confessions in Gaelic, and [he] coming from Philadelphia. And anyway, then my father took the fiddle, started playing the fiddle, and who jumped up on the floor and with a big pair of boots and started step dancing [but Father Charlie]. I happened to be going to the kitchen for something and my mother was standing in the hall. ‘You people happened to be laughing at me the other day. That’s exactly what I heard.'”

“Now who in the name of God would believe that I heard my own forerunner as plain as anything could be. And when I heard it I thought it was somebody else and I even cursed it. One evening we were sitting in the house and I was the only one, alone at the time with my father and mother and we were sitting in the kitchen. And all of a sudden, the front door opened. I heard somebody run up stairs, pause for a second, down the stairs again, slammed the door. And I went out â€¦ wondering who in the hell that was. There wasn’t a soul anywhere. When I came back in I was in terrible mood. ‘Oh,’ my mother said, ‘you’re all right. That was only a forerunner.’ Only a forerunner. So it was only a few days after that, I had a cousin who was dying, and I was working in the field â€¦ turnips or something, when my uncle Hector came to the fence and yelled, ‘Go after the priest, Jimmy wants the priest right away, he’s really on his last, you know.’ So, I had the horse in the cultivator, so I just jumped on the top of the horse and I wasn’t going to â€¦ I was just going to gallop away â€¦ but at that time, nobody would go out without something on their head. And, my God, just when I was at the gate I realized that the cap that I was wearing was split in two and, my God, I couldn’t go anywhere where somebody would see me with that. We always used the back door and I went to the front door and I knew that my good cap was hanging in the hall upstairs. And I picked up my cap and I ran downstairs. Long before the day was over my mother came and said, ‘You were cursing the other night when you heard your own forerunner.'”